“I’m with you! Here’s to ourselves!”
It was after the fourth drink that Sir Gerald asked humbly, “What do you think of North Dakota mortgages?” but it was not till after the fifth that Babbitt began to call him “Jerry,” and Sir Gerald confided, “I say, do you mind if I pull off my boots?” and ecstatically stretched his knightly feet, his poor, tired, hot, swollen feet out on the bed.
After the sixth, Babbitt irregularly arose. “Well, I better be hiking along. Jerry, you’re a regular human being! I wish to thunder we’d been better acquainted in Zenith. Lookit. Can’t you come back and stay with me a while?”
“So sorry—must go to New York to-morrow. Most awfully sorry, old boy. I haven’t enjoyed an evening so much since I’ve been in the States. Real talk. Not all this social rot. I’d never have let them give me the beastly title—and I didn’t get it for nothing, eh?—if I’d thought I’d have to talk to women about primitives and polo! Goodish thing to have in Nottingham, though; annoyed the mayor most frightfully when I got it; and of course the missus likes it. But nobody calls me ‘Jerry’ now—” He was almost weeping. “—and nobody in the States has treated me like a friend till to-night! Good-by, old chap, good-by! Thanks awfully!”
“Don’t mention it, Jerry. And remember whenever you get to Zenith, the latch-string is always out.”
“And don’t forget, old boy, if you ever come to Nottingham, Mother and I will be frightfully glad to see you. I shall tell the fellows in Nottingham your ideas about Visions and Real Guys—at our next Rotary Club luncheon.”
IV
Babbitt lay abed at his hotel, imagining the Zenith Athletic Club asking him, “What kind of a time d’you have in Chicago?” and his answering, “Oh, fair; ran around with Sir Gerald Doak a lot;” picturing himself meeting Lucile McKelvey and admonishing her, “You’re all right, Mrs. Mac, when you aren’t trying to pull this highbrow pose. It’s just as Gerald Doak says to me in Chicago—oh, yes, Jerry’s an old friend of mine—the wife and I are thinking of running over to England to stay with Jerry in his castle, next year—and he said to me, ‘Georgie, old bean, I like Lucile first-rate, but you and me, George, we got to make her get over this highty-tighty hooptediddle way she’s got.”
But that evening a thing happened which wrecked his pride.